Like all years, 2025 was a bad one. Very soon it will be over, and you can try to forget about some bad sporting event in April, or the time in June they messed up your order, or that chest cold you got in September that lasted all the way until November.
What you must remember are the good things that happened in 2025. Please come up with yours while I share mine.
Favorite Caps player
It’s Tom Wilson, future Olympian and formerly despised pariah. Please forgive me; I’m about to piss a lot of you off with a graph. Here is Tom Wilson compared to pest-cum-superstar Brad Marchand:
Except for Wilson’s ACL injury, they’re the same dude. They’re a low-ice-time drama king who slowly worked his way up the lineup. Now they’re indispensable, but they’re still drama kings.
As I write this, Wilson ranks first on the Caps in points. If you told me back in 2013 that this would be the case at the dawn of 2026, I’d assume we’d have experienced a great-ravine style global cataclysm. But no, it’s just that Wilson really did become the mythical power forward we hoped and prayed he would.
Favorite game
In February, 39-year-old Alex Ovechkin scored a hat trick to humiliate Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers.
Well, not humiliate, really. Connor McDavid had a piece of all three Oilers goals.
That game ended a window of time in which the Caps scored like 14 goals in 24 hours. It was a really fun time. I want it back.
Favorite non-Caps player
This category always burns me. I picked Jesper Bratt last year, and he lit up the Caps twice last week. This year I’m going to go with Toronto’s William Nylander, another long-time fascination of mine. Nylander is not getting goals like last season, but I think he’s weathered the storm of Marner’s exit better than some. More critically, I think he freaking hates head coach Craig Berube.
If you yell at me like that, I’m melting down. I’m calling in sick. I’m rewatching Pacific Rim, ordering a private limo for Cold Stone Creamery, and watching Vine compilations from a dark bathroom. If you yell at the son of Michael Nylander like that, he doesn’t flap. The man is unflappable. And he’ll be the savior of the Maple Leafs.
When Berube gets fired, and he will be fired, Nylander won’t even flinch. Because his is the Swedish hatred: calm, quiet, and diplomatic.
Favorite Caps play
I don’t know if this counts. This is kind of like an anti-play. On April 4, Alex Ovechkin could have scored goal no. 895 against the Chicago Blackhawks, but there was one problem: no one was in net.
Ovi had requested that head coach Spencer Carbery not play him in empty-net situations when the record was on the line. So, instead, Ryan Leonard got his first NHL goal that night, and we had to wait 48 more hours for no. 895.
I love that Ovechkin wanted the record-breaking goal to be a highlight – to be something worth rewatching and talking about forever. We know he’s a fierce competitor, but he’s also an entertainer who serves the people.
Favorite non-Caps play
One day you might be asked to explain the global-political context of the Four Nations brawl.
You will not be able to. Too much has happened since. It’s too fuzzy now. We know that Brandon Hagel and Matthew Tkachuk fought. And that Sam Bennett and Brady Tkachuk fought. And that J.T. Miller and Colton Parayko – possibly the secret, third Tkachuk brother – fought.
But why? Did Wayne Gretzky defect to the Court of Mar-a-Lago? Did Justin Trudeau kidnap Katy Perry? Something about US broadcast rights to Heated Rivalry? No one will be able to recall why the US and Canada punched each others’ faces in 2025, but we will all know this: it was fun and dumb.
The sad epilogue to the affair was the months-long delusion that Jordan Binnington will be a good goalie for Team USA at the Milan Olympics, no matter how bad he’s been this season.
Favorite RMNB story
I’m so glad Jakob Chychrun is here. Acquired for Nick Jensen in 2024, Chychrun has become a reliable source of a) points, and b) stories. He’s great at both. I picked the Tesla story, but really it’s a tie with the no-lightbulbs-in-the-house story.
There is no person on earth I’m more certain owns an ice barrel.
In a different age, Chychrun would be slugging colloidal silver and applying leeches. I’m glad he’s here and now, being a “walking meme” and great damn hockey player.
Favorite music
It was a lot of heavy stuff.
How about private music by Deftones? Just like they transcended genre in 2000, the band is transcending time now. They’re my niece’s favorite band, and they put out one of the most exciting albums of 2025.
I also really liked Deafheaven’s Lonely People With Power album. They’ve had different sounds over the years, and on this record they’ve recombined them in a compelling way.
Ghost’s Skeleta was fun, but it doesn’t rank among my faves by them. Kamasi Washington’s soundtrack to Lazarus (which I have not seen) is wonderful. I liked the urgency in Don’t Tap the Glass by Tyler, the Creator. Earl Sweatshirt’s Live Laugh Love has him pushing against his own boundaries.
The best concert I saw this year was Nine Inch Nails, but I’m pretending they didn’t release an album in 2025.
Bee tee dubs, I released two albums this year under the name Late-Night Delivery: A guitar album called Cool Pig and an instrumental album called Good Advice for Satan’s Kingdom.
The track above is dedicated to my friend Trent, my partner in LND, who passed away in September. One of my last conversations with him was about how everyone was calling this Lil Wayne song the worst of the year – and how it sounds too much like one he and I made in 2020.
Favorite TV show
Not just the best thing on TV in 2025, Andor is the best Star Wars thing since 1980.
At the start, Cassian is a caged rat looking for a way out. This is a political show – really a greatest hits of antifascism dressed up scifi, so Andor’s personal awakening is also a political one. He realizes his rage isn’t his alone. His life gains purpose, and then he ends it as a holy messenger.
I think we hear some version of “people need to know what happened here” five times in the series. Andor sends that message – plus one more about the Death Star. He is the spirit of the rebellion, and he doesn’t even know it. No one outside the show even knows his name. Beautiful. One of the best TV shows ever made.
Favorite book
I’m sorry. I didn’t really read any new books this year. I spent the entire year reading Discworld and parenting books. The most recent thing I read was 2024’s ¡No Pasarán! by Matt Christman, about how the fractured left failed to unite to stop the rise of fascism in Spain. A little random as a topic, but sure.
In 2026, I’m going to read the The Fort Bragg Cartel, The Shattering Peace, Lies Weeping, Alecto the Ninth (I hope), and Radiant Star. I don’t think I’ll be reading The Winds of Winter.
Favorite movie
One Battle After Another got my highest score on Letterboxd, but my favorite movie of the year was Sinners. I love that a non-franchise genre movie starring almost exclusively black people made $360 million dollars. I think it was the highest-grossing non-IP movie of the year. But it’s weird to cheer on a movie for being commercially successful; I mostly just enjoyed the flick. For a movie where (SPOILER REDACTED), everyone seemed like they were having fun making it. I even enjoyed that one musical sequence in the middle. Ryan Coogler has proved he can make great movies (Judas and the Black Messiah) and some turkeys (Wakanda Forever). Here he proved he can play with multiple genres (musical, horror, blaxploitation, period) and still be trenchant.
Superman rocked also. He saves a squirrel in it. That’s up my alley. Black Bag is what I go to Soderbergh for. Weapons was exhilarating.
I watch a lot of bad movies, and I want to list the worst of them. Flight Risk. Fear Street: Prom Queen. Heads of State, The Amateur, Captain America: Brave New World, and The Gorge. All of these movies present a health risk to the viewer, so I can’t recommend you watch any of them. The Mel Gibson one was at least fascinating.
Favorite video game
I think I have done everything and everyone you can do in Hades 2. Beat the bosses, got the credits to roll, became Night’s Champion, beat the bosses again with Vow of Rivals on. It’s a great game. I’m watching Aileen grind through Silksong, and it’s great too. But my favorite game of the year is Split Fiction.
It’s not a hard game. It’s not even a particularly well-written game. The characters are stock (though I appreciated Zoe’s backstory). But the co-op gameplay is so fun – remixing video game history, ancient and recent. Aileen and I had the best time playing it together.
Your turn! Happy New Year!
